4 ms·
four and a half pages of build up to come to this: > And just as there is a best size for every animal, so the same is true for every human institution. In the
by froh 3y ago
four and a half pages of build up to come to this:
> And just as there is a best size for every animal, so the same is true for
every human institution. In the Greek type of democracy all the citizens
could listen to a series of orators and vote directly on questions of legislation. Hence their philosophers held that a small city was the largest possible
democratic state. The English invention of representative government made
a democratic nation possible, and the possibility was first realized in the
United States, and later elsewhere. With the development of broadcasting
it has once more become possible for every citizen to listen to the political
views of representative orators, and the future may perhaps see the return
of the national state to the Greek form of democracy. Even the referendum
has been made possible only by the institution of daily newspapers.
> To the biologist the problem of socialism appears largely as a problem of
size. The extreme socialists desire to run every nation as a single business
5
concern. I do not suppose that Henry Ford would find much difficulty in
running Andorra or Luxembourg on a socialistic basis. He has already more
men on his pay-roll than their population. It is conceivable that a syndicate
of Fords, if we could find them, would make Belgium Ltd or Denmark Inc.
pay their way. But while nationalization of certain industries is an obvious
possibility in the largest of states, I find it no easier to picture a completely socialized British Empire or United States than an elephant turning somersaults or a hippopotamus jumping a hedge
I love it
- rexpop 3y agoThis is confusing because Ford was a fascist autocrat.
- michael1999 3y agoPerhaps Haldane was making an analogy between fascist autocrats and the commissars that run a Leninist society.
- rexpop 3y agoAh, of course. I always feel a bit stupid when I read assertions like "Henry Ford could run a socialistic enterprise" as though that weren't a contradiction in terms. The man was violently anti-worker. He publicly opposed the New Deal as a “socialist scheme” and refused to cooperate with its programs, eg the Social Security Act. He hired thugs and spies to prevent unionization and in 1937, at his “Battle of the Overpass”, Ford service members beat UAW officials and union supporters who were trying to distribute flyers at the plant. Hardly a "socialistic" undertaking. His Americanism, was based on individualism, nationalism, nativism, and Protestantism, precepts anathema, certainly, to the "internationalism" prevalent among his socialist contemporaries. All in all, I highly doubt the guy could tie his shoes in a socialistic fashion, let alone "run" a commune.
- michael1999 3y agoI think the critique is deeper that that. The duties and activities of central planners and capitalists are very similar. They set priorities, decide on production processes, allocate labour, set budgets, quotas. They decide compensation and "punishments" for those deemed to have failed. Downthread, Eru links to the famous "The Theory of the Firm" where Coase analogizes capitalist firms as islands of central planning in a sea of competition. Coase is very explicit about tradeoffs to scale between planned internal production, and market production, and this is similar to the tradeoffs in scale described by Haldane here. Coase published that in 1937 but Haldane clearly sees the parallel in 1926. Haldane's _point_ is that it would take a talented brute like Ford to try to run even a tiny entity like Andorra in a centrally-planned way. It's not like the revolutionary Leninists had any hesitation to arrest workers showing "counter-revolutionary" tendencies like striking to demanding better pay. I don't think it coincidental that this article coincides with the rise of Stalin. Haldane was a wooly-headed romantic Socialist at heart, but he recognized that Leninist dictatorship couldn't work at a national scale, even in theory. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37552027 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37552027 https://libcom.org/article/strikes-against-stalin-1930s-russia-jeffrey-rossman https://libcom.org/article/strikes-against-stalin-1930s-russ...
- rexpop 3y ago"Islands of tyranny," was Chomsky's retort. He and Coase are both cited in Verso's 2019 People's Republic of Walmart which I haven't read, but is now pulling ahead of Stafford Beer on my nightstand.